With the exception of Thomas Hardy, all the notable historical characters featured in the play have tombs or memorials in the Minster.
Elizabeth Snodgrass
Her name was spotted by novelist Charles Dickens on a visit to the Minster. He decided to use it in his book The Pickwick Papers.
Joseph Collett
Died in 1621 leaving 20 pounds sterling per annum for the relief of ten poor people, five men and five women of the Parish who “should attend divine service in the Parish church. If they are absent they should lose four pence out of their pay which shall be given to those not offending.”
Sir Edmund Uvedale
St. George’s Chapel, North Wall. Died 1606. His widow “in doleful duty erected” a monument to him. It was carved by an Italian sculptor in renaissance style. Uvedale’s eyes are open as if the figure were walking to his own resurrection. After an accident it was repaired and given two left feet.
Henrietta and Harriet Defoe
Daughters of the famous novelist Daniel Defoe who wrote Robinson Crusoe. Henrietta married a Wimborne man, Mr Boston. Harriet is buried with her in St George’s Chapel but their tombstone is now lost.
Sir Anthony Ettricke
Buried under the South West Window in Holy Trinity Chapel. Eminent barrister and distinguished antiquary. A former pupil of Wimborne Grammar School. Later of Trinity College, Oxford, where he filled almost every important post with distinction. He was called to the Bar in 1652.
From 1662 until 1682 Ettricke was Recorder and Magistrate of the town of Poole. During this period the rebellious Duke of Monmouth was sent to him for trial after his capture near Horton beneath an ash tree. Ettricke convicted him and sent him for execution at the Tower of London.
As he grew old he was said to become “humorous, phlegmatic and credulous”. He was offended by the inhabitants of Wimborne and made a solemn vow that he would “never be buried within the church or without it; neither below the ground or above it”.
Later when his anger had subsided he had a longing to be buried with his ancestors. Being a skilled lawyer he managed to avoid breaking his oath by obtaining permission to make a recess in the wall where his coffin was laid. He was also convinced he would die in 1693 and had the coffin inscribed with this date. In fact he died in 1703 and the coffin shows the date altered accordingly.
John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset
Grandson of John of Gaunt.
and Margaret, Duchess of Somerset
Daughter of Sir John Beauchamp.
They lie together in an alabaster tomb at the top of the steps in the Presbytery. They were also parents of Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, and thus the grandparents of Henry VII. They were both Lancastrians and wear the double collar ‘SS’ of Lancaster.
Gertrude, Marchioness of Exeter (Gertrude de Courtenay)
Also in the Presbytery opposite the Beauforts lies the daughter of William Blount and wife of Henry Courtenay, Earl of Devon and Marquis of Exeter, KG, who through his mother was a grandson of Edward IV. He was Commissioner at the trial of Anne Boleyn. He was later attainted and executed for aspiring to the crown.
Lord and Lady Exeter’s son was Edward Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon, to which title he was restored in a new creation and from whom the present Earl of Devon descends.
Ethelred, King of the Saxons
Elder brother of Alfred. Died of wounds received in fighting the Danes at Martin, some fifteen miles north of Wimborne. Brought to the Minster for burial in 871. Later a brass effigy was set in a Purbeck marble slab in the North Wall just beyond the sanctuary step. The half figure in royal robes is the only memorial brass effigy of an English king and was engraved in 1440. The Purbeck slab was originally much larger but was ruthlessly cut to its present size in 1857.
Charles Waldo Lionel Churchill
Memorial in the North Transept. The only son of Charles Marent Churchill, 2nd Lieut., 3rd Battery, The Hampshire Regiment. Attached 28th Mounted Infantry. Died at Klerksdorp South Africa on April 2nd 1902 of wounds received in action at Boshblutt on March 31st 1902 in his 19th year.
“Be thou faithful unto death
And I will give thee a crown of life”
William George Hawtrey Bankes
Memorial in the Holy Trinity Chapel. Cornet 7th Hussars; fifth son of Hon. George Bankes of Kingston Lacy. Fell mortally wounded on 19th March 1858 while charging a body of rebels near Lucknow, India during the Indian Mutiny. Died on 6th April 1858 aged 21 years. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry.
Thomas Hardy
He lived in Wimborne with is first wife Emma from 1881 to 1883 and wrote Two on a Tower here. The young hero of the novel, Swithin St Cleeve, was educated at Wimborne (Warborne) Grammar School. When Lady Constantine enquires about his schooling, her informant, Amos Fry, pays the school a startling tribute: “A place where they draw up young gam’sters’ brains like rhubarb under a ninepenny pan, my lady, excusing my common way. They hit so much larning into en that ’a could talk like the day of Pentecost”.
Living in the little house in The Avenue called ‘Llanherne’, Hardy enjoyed its well-kept garden with all sorts of old-fashioned flowers and fruit in profusion. When the weather permitted he liked to do his literary work sitting under the vine on the stable-wall “which for want of training hangs in long arms over my head nearly to the ground. The sun tries to shine through the great leaves, making a green light on the paper”.
The Minster was much to his taste. He saw it as a massive, dark, brooding presence with a touch of gaiety in the Quarterjack. As he copied the architectural detail, he formulated the poem How Smartly the Hours.
In a lighter vein he wrote The Levelled Churchyard, which made a satirical comment on the way the Minster’s burial-ground had been tidied up with scant regard for the identities of the dead. Headstones were removed and mounds levelled in such a wholesale fashion that the orderly patterns of internment were jumbled up in inextricable confusion. A ghostly voice complains in the poem that “Teetotal Tommy’s headstone’ has been transferred to the grave of a roaring drunkard, and that
“Here’s not a modest maiden elf
But dreads the final Trumpet,
Lest half of her should rise herself,
And half some sturdy strumpet.”